Kids playing "Knockout" try to randomly punch people in the face and knock them out

WASHINGTON (WUSA9) -- It's a shocking and violent "game" that kids across the country are "playing."

The point of Knockout or One-Hitter-Quitter, as many youth call it, is to randomly select someone walking down the street and punch them in the face in the hopes of knocking them out.

"They think it's funny. They think it's amusing," said one person about kids who take part in Knockout. She was interviewed in a Youtube video that has gone viral.

"I think it's madness. Man you know, they gotta find better - look at that. You know, that's somebody's mother, somebody's father," said a DC man as he watched the Youtube video for the first time when WUSA9 crews showed it to him on a cell phone.

Deaths in New York and St Louis have been linked to Knockout and there have been countless other victims who have survived, but barely.

"It's never really nothing you could do because you walking down the street and somebody hits you," said another DC resident.

What might be more terrifying than the random violence is why kids say they "play."

"For the fun of it," said another young man interviewed in the Youtube video. "Little kids run around and hit people and knock them out. Even though they shouldn't be doing it, people do it."

"They need to find something else to do," said a woman who was shown the video for the first time on U Street in DC.

She continued, "I think all of it is unsettling, whether it's random or targeted. It's sick."

There have been incidents across the country where certain groups of people were reportedly targeted based on race or religion, but, overwhelmingly, the attacks have been random.